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Updated: June 14, 2025
Even as this thought returned to him with its comfort, as it came always like a cool breath to preserve his balance in the heat and turmoil of his regret and pain, Rhetta Thayer came riding up the dim road. Her presence on that road at night was a greater testimonial to her confidence in the security he had brought to Ascalon and its borders than her tongue might have owned.
"I guess it'll be big enough to hold all the people that's in it when they're through," said Stilwell, unfeelingly. "Here's his badge," said Rhetta, offering it frantically. "Tell him he's still marshal!" "Yes, you can come for him now!" said Violet, accusingly. "I told you you remember now what I told you!" "O Violet, Violet! If you knew what I've paid for that if you knew!"
Rhetta pressed it down hard with the palm of her hand to make the stiff ribbon assume a graceful hang, so hard that she must have felt the kick of the new officer's heart just under it. And she looked up into his eyes with a glad, confident smile. "I feel safe now," she said, sighing as one who puts down a wearing burden at the end of a toilsome journey.
He was not a little nettled over his failure to find the marshal, and that officer's apparent shunning of duty in face of this mocking challenge to his authority. "Why, Rhetta, you wanted him to take the office, you urged him to," he reminded her. "I don't understand this sudden concern for the man's safety in disregard of his oath and duty, this this unaccountable "
Riley Caldwell, the young printer, rushed past her out of the shop, his roached hair like an Algonquin's standing high above his narrow forehead, his face white as if washed by death. Impelled by a desire that was commanding as it was terrifying, moved by a hope that was only a shred of a raveled dream, Rhetta joined the moving tide that set toward Peden's door. Dead Morgan was dead!
From where he stood Morgan could not see the girl's face, only her restless hand on the bridle rein, the brown of her riding skirt, the beginning of white at her waist. "There ought to be men enough in Ascalon to take care of Craddock," Violet said. "He's not alone, some of those Texas cowboys are with him," Rhetta explained, her voice firmer, her words quicker. "Mr.
People were hastening by in the direction of Peden's, scattered at first, like the beginning of a retreat, coming then by twos and threes, presently overflowing the sidewalk, running in the street. Rhetta stood staring, half insensible, on this outpouring.
There was peace in the night around them, for all the turmoil there might be in human hearts, for night had eased the throbbing, drouth-cursed earth of its burning, and called the trumpeters of the greenery out along the riverside. "I'm afraid he'll come," said Rhetta by and by. "Why should he come?" asked Violet, stroking back the other's hair.
Morgan to take the office," said Rhetta when Judge Thayer paused, "if I felt safe to stay in Ascalon another day with anybody else as marshal." "That's a compelling reason for a man to take a job," Morgan told her, looking for a daring moment into the cool clarity of her honest brown eyes. "But I might make it worse instead of better.
There were some who asked her kindly to go away, others who appealed earnestly against her looking into the place, as Rhetta pushed her way, panting like an exhausted swimmer, through the crowd. Nothing would turn her; appeals were dim as cries in drowning ears. Gaining the door, she paused a moment, hands pressed to her cheeks, hair fallen in disorder.
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